The Quest
by daysofstorm
Summary: John can't find his laptop...


"Where did you put it?"

Sherlock didn't even look up from the kitchen table, carefully balancing the pipette between his fingers.

"Sherlock!" John demanded, but Sherlock still didn't react.

"Where is it?"

With a drawn out sigh as if John was being incredibly annoying, he put down the pipette and looked at John blankly. John narrowed his eyes at him. He couldn't stare like Sherlock could, but he might as well try. "Where is it?" Another sigh. John felt heat rising in his cheeks.

"Where is what?"

"My laptop." He tried to glower, but Sherlock remained unimpressed.

"How would I know?" He turned back to his experiment, something that involved very colourful substances and something which John thought were eyeballs, and he did not really want to know for sure. The stench of vinegar was almost making him sick and John was definitely not planning on spending more time in the kitchen than strictly necessary.

"Because you took it."

Sherlock frowned and shot him a sideway glance which clearly told John that he didn't have time for whatever his problem was.

"Sherlock, for fuck's sake!" He felt exasperated now. Sherlock could be so incredibly stubborn sometimes. "Just tell me."

"Where did you last see it?" Sherlock probably thought he was being helpful, but John knew that he had taken it.

"Sherlock, if you broke it…"

"I did not break it. I don't remember if I took it."

John gaped. "You don't remember." He sounded defeated when he had wanted to sound irritated. The worst part was that it was probably true. Sherlock did forget a lot of things when he wasn't interested.

"Have you looked for it?" Sherlock let two drops of dark red liquid trickle into one of the jars in front of him.

"Well, the obvious places. The living room, my room, your room. It's not there."

"John, just look again. It must be somewhere." He had the decency to look at him while one more scarlet drop fell into the murky liquid below. He seemed honestly concerned now. Maybe he remembered that John's laptop had probably more of his own data on it than John's.

John huffed and turned around, missing the small smirk that stole its way quietly onto Sherlock's features.

He went upstairs, and checked under his pillow. Nothing. His wardrobe. Nothing. Oh wait, there was a shirt that had mysteriously gone missing months ago. With a smile he remembered the circumstanced under which he had shed it the last time he had worn it. Strange, he could have sworn that he hadn't seen it since that night.

Shaking his head and muttering to himself, he checked all possible places in his room, but except for an old notebook which had little adorable scribbles in it; done by Sherlock in a night when alcohol had actually managed to override his unnatural need to not let himself be cute and which John had been sure he had burned long ago in shame, and a pair of sunglasses that he hadn't seen since last summer, he didn't find his laptop.

By the time he was done searching Sherlock's room, he had forgotten why he had wanted to find his laptop in the first place. He sat on Sherlock's bed, rubbing his face. Sunday morning should not be spent running around the flat looking for his laptop. Just because Sherlock was done with his last case which had pretty much meant that for the last week they hadn't left the flat at all, pouring over documents and photographs and about five thousand different kinds of thread just to find out who had killed those three men in that sealed off flat in Chelsea it didn't mean that he would subject himself to cabin fever while Sherlock had found a new interesting case.

Mrs Hudson had gone away to see some distant relatives for the week and only online shopping had kept their milk and sugar supply high enough for John to not venture out to buy some himself. Maybe it was just time to leave the flat, go for a walk. Sherlock shouldn't hover over the next experiment, not after this week of frantic thinking and endless staring at thread through the microscope. No, he would force him to go out, take a walk, possibly even sit down in the warm spring sunshine for a while.

"Sherlock," he called, knowing that he heard him, even if he wouldn't answer. "We're going out. And you will not refuse."

"Have you checked the bathroom?" was the answer from downstairs.

"The bathroom?" John muttered to himself. Why in the world would his laptop be in the bathroom. Well, he was slowly running out of places to look, so he got up, stretched and pushed the bathroom door open. On the closed lid of the toilet sat his laptop. "What the… Sherlock? What _is_ my laptop doing in the bathroom?"

No answer from the kitchen. He grabbed it and made his way downstairs, adamant at chiding Sherlock for playing games with him when he was not up for it. When he entered the kitchen, he forgot everything he had wanted to say. The stench had disappeared as Sherlock had opened all of the windows, both in the kitchen and the living room.

Sherlock sat at the table, which was actually covered with a table cloth, probably nicked from Mrs Hudson after rescuing the skull from her flat two weeks ago. On top sat two plates, one for him and one for Sherlock, both holding two jam covered pieces of toast and next to them were two mugs, filled with steaming tea. In the middle of the table stood a bowl with boiled eggs, each one of them of a different vibrant colour, a set of cadbury cream eggs next to it.

"Happy Easter, or whatever you say on the occasion," Sherlock said, grinning smugly at John, who had not managed to close his mouth since he had entered the kitchen.

For a few seconds he just kept on staring, but then he found his voice again. "It's Easter Sunday."

"Yes, did you forget?" Sherlock was clearly amused that something so 'common knowledge' had escaped John's mind while _he_ had thought of it.

"And you hid my laptop?" Slowly it dawned on him why he had found so many objects which he had thought long lost. "And the shirt, and the sunglasses and that notebook…"

Sherlock's grin grew even wider.

"And those," John pointed at the table, "are not eyeballs."

"Obviously not, I never said they were."

"I hate you," he said, finally defeated.

"Sit down and eat, the tea is getting cold."

John inhaled deeply and walked around the table, forcefully pulling Sherlock's chair back. "The tea can wait," he growled as he climbed on top of Sherlock's lap to show him just how much he hated him.


End file.
